


Afloat

by CertifiedBigBoy



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: A New Jericho, Coming of Age, Connor being all snack-like, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Doing Laundry, Eventual Smut, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, First Love, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Minor Character Death, Post-Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Slow Burn, its a city on a ship it’s fun and fresh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 17:17:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15823422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CertifiedBigBoy/pseuds/CertifiedBigBoy
Summary: The pacifist revolution was not without great loss. With Jericho destroyed and most of the country left unmoved by the android effort, it was clear that the search for a new android capital, some fragment of the world where androids and humans alike could safely thrive, was imminent. At the time, no one could foresee the greatness of a vibrant, untainted, ever-growing community of android-human equality that laid on the future's edge. It became known in whispers as Argo. A safe haven for anyone who managed to locate it.After the death of your past life, you leave Detroit, taking only what you need. Running, walking, turning only where they told you to. Following a trail of bread crumbs left by hundreds who made it.After some time, you manage to scratch out a living for yourself. You learn to sail the rhythm of life that keeps the drifting city afloat, but you learned to do it alone. Year after year, the system pairs deviants with human hosts to help them learn what it truly means to become human.Oh, how quickly things change when the system picks you.





	Afloat

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance that the reader is not gender neutral. :( Just makes things easier to write. Hopefully you'll find a way to enjoy it still.

## You. ****

How and when Argo was discovered remains somewhat of a mystery. Nonetheless, it flourished at an alarming pace, a new human-android nation rising from the ashes of intolerance. Formerly named the S.S. Argo, the cargo liner, roughly eight times the size of Jericho, was once a marvel of the shipping industry. Despite the many modes of transportation that technological advancement was always providing, ships still proved efficient in getting cargo from one place to another. In Argo's case: biocomponents. An entire compartment full was discovered when they came across it, left to rust in the harbor. It didn't make much of a difference, really, considering Argo's nearness to one of hundreds of CyberLife's warehouse complexes. With a few deviant suppliers, the place was an Eden for androids and the humans who stood beside them.

It wasn't difficult to run electrical wiring through the ship. Once a few 3D printers were gingerly snuck aboard, it was a breeze to print spare parts for those who needed upkeep. A primary base established in the heart of the ship became a central where these things were made and stored, ran by the few with the most intelligent programming. 

Strings of lights lit the city from within, dripping from pipes and rafters overhead like stars. Small shelters were built in nooks and crannies from any scrap metal or wood they could find lying about the shipyard. Homes soon topped tiers and platforms, bridges and decks. Some built above deck as the sanctuary expanded, and soon enough the tiny buildings covered the bow, stern, and platforms above. In time they even managed to develop an urban farm using synthetic soil brought in, one bag at a time. Crops for those who ate grew happily in the sunshine that bathed the floating city's upper decks. That was where you spent most of your time, nowadays.

It was a hard life. But you'd be lying if you said it all didn't take your breath away. The houses with their mangled, eclectic, gingerbread charm. The gardens, growing in salty air and rusting iron. The artificial stars that lit your daily route and the real, dazzling ones you could finally see at night, now far from Detroit's light pollution. The people, the music. The markets. The festivals. The feeling of true belonging that connected every heart, blue and red, through an unspoken bond. The city lived, no--it breathed, suspended in a medium of security. Of simple joy.

The pacifist revolution had not been as pure and clean as they'd hoped it to be. Blood ran, as it always must in the end. Androids blinded to the peaceful intent of the uprising by their new, raw anger fought back against police and even civilians. Buildings were defaced, windows broken, fires set. Many, both android and human, were killed. Sometimes, but only sometimes, you forgot about Dad. A year gone by and still it'd never felt true.

Cruelly, he wasn't even killed in the fights. No. His own failing heart did it. No reason in it. None at all. How ugly and horrible life could be. How small it made you feel when you thought about how there wasn't a single rhyme or reason to it late at night while you laid on your cot. Sometimes, but less now, you cried, and the tears would burn a hot trail as they rolled down into your hair and over your ears. His in-home android nurse, Kira, was literally pulled apart in the street about an hour before he passed. You weren't home.

There was no reason for you to remain. And so you left, rather hastily, that photo of him you'd always loved tucked in your breast pocket, only the necessities shoved into a backpack. That included your record player and a few albums. You knew it might break in there, but you couldn't leave music behind. It was all that was left for you.

You started towards the place you only heard about in hushed breaths at house parties and waiting rooms, straining your eyes to search for the fragments leading you there. The record player really weighed you down. Slowly, a creaking burn settled in between your shoulder blades. By nightfall your feet had begun to bleed in your sneakers, so you took them off and pitched them, one following the other, into the blackened forest. That night you slept in an abandoned car on the highway's edge, finding you had no strength left to cry.

You think a week had passed between then and the moment you stumbled onto the boarding plank. You're not completely sure--you didn't bring a watch. Getting in was no song and a dance. There was no one there with arms open wide, nobody phased by how haggard you looked or how far you'd come. They couldn't afford to be overtly friendly. Not after what'd become of Jericho. After a few scans and a background check, however, they quickly found that you were harmless. A young couple just outside the Heart had a spare bed for you for the night, and the girl even had a hot bath drawn. The face that met your eyes in the steamy mirror that night was a stranger. Someone with dark circles, pale lips and sunken, hungry cheekbones. You remember standing there for a minute, just pressing your finger into the hollows below your cheeks before getting in. An older man who lived up on deck in the Above had passed away recently, they told you. His home was empty, and it was yours.

Slowly, with wide eyes and bare feet, you learned how to live again.

\---

## Connor. ****

Despite the newfound excitement that accompanied Connor's deviancy, he found himself silently waiting for everything to feel... normal again, as it once had. The two of them, Hank and himself, made an effort to return back to life as it was. They resumed their positions at the precinct, now assigned to good old regular homicide. That's where they spent most of their time; Connor left when Hank left, and Hank stayed later and later every night, trying to prove himself to "Who? I don't know, Connor. The goddamn man in the moon."

Thankfully, this meant he wasn't frequenting the local bars as much as he once did. He'd never admit it, but Connor was very pleased with this development.

It certainly was easier than walking back to Hank's house through the thick of everything that was going on. Or coming home and easing into the couch only to be blasted with constant media coverage of the uprising. "Take your pick," Hank said when Connor had his first meeting with boredom. From then on there was never time to be bored; not once the killings picked up.

Since Connor no longer had any attachment to CyberLife, he was given the great honor and pleasure of living with Hank in his home. Actually, there wasn't much 'living' where Connor was concerned, but he felt like he was learning, however slowly, what it meant to be someone. And that made him, well, it made him feel a little more complete, made him feel some kind of indescribable fullness deep in his chest while he knelt on the kitchen floor, his fingers expertly kneading Sumo's belly fur. (Petting Sumo was Connor's favorite way of exercising his new autonomy.)

However, it was all only a temporary distraction from the simple truth: Detroit was no longer home.

The two of them were waiting on one Double Decker burger at Dickie's one Thursday night when Hank first heard it. He wasn't even sure he had until Connor picked up on it.

"Lieutenant," the young man said quietly, turning his eyes to meet his friend's. Hank's eyes were wide. Connor was certain he was listening, too.

"Yeah kid, shhh," Hank responded. "I know." It was the two men just down the bar from them, donned in dark beanies and, once Connor focused in, some very worn winter clothes. He didn't bother scanning them; it wasn't their age or birthdate he was so intrigued by, but their low conversation.

Connor's gaze bore into the bar top as he turned up the volume in his audio processing unit.

"...Argo, yeah. Yeah. This shit's massive. Bigger than Jericho ever was. I swear, you should see how many people are squatting there..."

"...People? Or androids." There was a brief silence. Hank opened his mouth to speak, but Connor shot him a quick look.

"Both."

Another silence.

"...Come with me, man."

"...I don't know..."

The other said something indistinguishable. Connor tried tweaking the volume. "Jericho, Connor," Hank's brash whisper now seemed to echo off the bar top. "You should record this."

They both knew, however, that Connor was already one step ahead. His eyelids twitched as he focused in on the napkin the more adamant man was scrawling on. He clicked the pen a few times, roughly scribbled to coax the ink, then began to write what appeared to be steps, peppered with various symbols, while the other man leaned over him, carefully watching as this crucial information (Perhaps a key of some sort?) was given up to him.

From this angle Connor was having trouble reading what was written, so he waited. He watched as the man quickly handed it to the other, who cautiously stuffed it in his pocket. The exchange took all of about two seconds, but once the note was exposed straight-on to Connor's vision, he took a snapshot of it.

He and Hank sat in wait as the two men got up to leave not long after. Connor provided a real-time estimate of how far away they were from the establishment, and Hank took anxious swigs from his soda until Connor concluded that they were a safe enough distance. Just as Hank suggested that they up and leave to figure out what the hell they'd just witnessed someplace safer, the Double Decker arrived.

"Actually, we'll get this in a bag, please," Connor told the bar-back as he stood from his stool. Hank, still sitting, looked up at Connor with his arms outstretched and palms facing upwards. A sign of annoyance, Connor recognized.

"What the hell, Con?"

\---

The paper bag felt warm in his grip as he stood outside the door, watching the lieutenant unwrapping Sumo's leash from a lamp post. Once he was free, the three of them started back towards home.

"Geez," Hank said once Dickie's was a few blocks behind. Connor watched the breath from his interjection turn to white vapor, then disappear into the black night. "Jericho. They said it's like a, like a whole 'nother Jericho..." Hank trailed off, looking upwards toward the sky. "What do you make of that, Connor?"

"I secured a photo of what was written down," Connor stated, watching Sumo padding alongside his legs. "I believe they were... instructions. Directions, maybe. I haven't analyzed it yet."

Hank let out a short chuckle. "You really are one sly fucker, you know that?" He hit Connor lightly on the shoulder, making him grin. Once, his smiles were forced, a compulsion of his programming. This was different. He liked making Hank proud.

"Wait," Hank said, stopping in his tracks. Connor halted. Sumo yawned. "You haven't even analyzed it yet?"

Connor stared at him blankly, his temple pulsing yellow. "...No."

"Well take a damn look at it, maybe!" Hank threw up his arms and resumed walking. Connor followed suit, but allowed the image to fully occupy his vision as he retrieved it from his CPU. Or rather, his mind. He zoomed in on the HD frame, manipulating the image until he could perfectly read the handwriting.

This time, Connor was the one who stopped.

"What is it?" Hank asked, looking back at the android. "Connor?"

"As it turns out, I was correct," Connor finally replied once he was done reading. His gaze found Hank's. "They were a set of complete directions to the Argo, a refuge for deviants."

"And humans, apparently," Hank replied, mulling over this information. Both men stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, halfway to Hank's place, both clearly deep in thought. After a long bout of silence, Hank finally cleared his throat.

"What are we supposed to do with this, Connor?" He asked, shaking his head as he stared down at the concrete. Connor placidly observed the man and waited for him to continue. "I mean, what, do we tell someone? Huh?"

Silence.

Connor felt a bit hopeless, hanging in that moment. He didn't know what the correct answer was, or even what Hank wanted to hear. He was finding less certainty in himself every day since becoming deviant.

"This is big, Connor," Hank probed, trying gently to elicit some sort of response. "I mean, if theres another place... this, hell, this is fucking big."

Connor knew, he knew it was fucking big. Knew what it meant, remembered how powerful Jericho had felt even when it was just the few androids that he'd seen in the brief moments he was there. He could see the flashes of yellow light tinging his vision out of the corner of his eye as his LED spun. He dug out the recording he'd secured from Dickie's, turned it over and over in his head like a coin between his knuckles.

_"...I'm telling you. It's a full-blown city, man..."_

_"...we could live there..."_

"We could go check it out, Connor..." Hank's voice suddenly mixed in with the recording. "We could, I don't know, we could tell someone."

_"...come with me, man..."_

"It's your call," Hank offered.

Connor turned his gaze upward, staring into the black, starless vault. He allowed his eyes to flit about, adjusting their focus in an attempt to bring the stars into view, but all that was visible were the tall buildings, the billboards, and the bullet trains omitting clouds of bright light up above. Since when could one not see the stars in this city? They were visible when standing in Hank's front yard, but now he couldn't stay out there long without an unpleasant encounter finding its way to the only place he felt truly safe. 

Intolerance, that was a generous word to describe it. It'd settled nicely in the city of Detroit, stretching out, making a permanent home for itself. Its specialty, it seemed, was nestling in places an android least expected it, evading all capabilities of calculated prediction. It was a great, trembling, violent yet all at once passive beast, one not even the most stringent equality legislation could beat down. Connor had to surpass one barrier just to gain control of his own thoughts, his own actions, but this was the barrier keeping him from living freely not as a thing, but as an individual.

"I..." Connor stumbled, testing himself. "I want to go there, Hank."

The older man felt his mouth open gently. 'Hank'. Not 'lieutenant'. Caught off guard, Hank matched the young man's eyes and felt himself burned by the conviction and desperate hope that lay behind them. Goddamn, it was the most human he'd ever looked.

"I want to leave Detroit."

\---

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> Jesus. Sis. That took me much longer to write than expected. If you guys actually like this shit idk if I'll be able to get a second chapter out within the next couple days (im starting school literally tomorrow and its 5 am rn.) (also if the wording in this was ever weird or uncomfy then I'm actually very sorry because... it's 5 am rn)
> 
> Y'all, I just... I really like Connor. Next thing I know this idea pops into my head and I'm on the waitlist for this fricking site just so I can crank this baby out. Despite all of this, I hope you enjoyed reading her. :) Don't worry, I have exciting developments on the way, just you wait and see. Stick around for the long haul and you might even (most definitely) get some smut.
> 
> Jokes aside though, I'd love to hear what you think! (Ew that's a little cliche, but you know I'm trying to be genuine.) If you have any suggestions, PLEASE spill the tea. I'll love you for it.
> 
> Thanks for reading. I really do appreciate it :)


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